


Squib

by limeta



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Abused Harry, Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chance Meetings, Family Dynamics, Gen, Harry Potter Abandoned by Dursleys, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, New Year's Eve, Parselmouth Harry Potter, Sane Tom Riddle, Squib Harry Potter, Tom Riddle | Voldemort Adopts Harry Potter, Underage Drinking, Voldemort Raises Harry Potter, the Dursleys are terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 16:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/pseuds/limeta
Summary: Harry Potter is a Squib. He is also a horcrux. When the Dursleys kick him out in freezing December winter subconciously Harry finds himself wandering to a place the horcrux remembers visitng. Lucky for Harry, Lord Voldemort is a creature of habit.





	Squib

London was not a kind place to be when one was a drunk, abused child.

A series of unfortunate events transported one fourteen year old Harry Potter from Privet Drive to the bustling capital city of devious, illicit content. He wandered the streets aimlessly, trying and failing to keep his stomach’s contents from occluding his mind. A few steps he would make, stop, throw up, and then continue the process.

When a police officer tried to stop him Harry found strength in him to run away. It would be bad if he was brought back to his relatives. Rather ill-wise, if one might dare to imply.

He rounded into a more secluded channel of alleyways and allowed his bad luck to lead him to Woolwich. There were fewer people around there, and even those that did see him couldn't care less for him, too invested in their own business to mind a child.

Jeers hurried his step; leers even more.

Harry inhaled and exhaled. His mind spun and his stomach reeled forward and backwards. A disgusting smell of alcohol rested heavily on his lips, mixed with vomit and salty tears.

Shaky fingers took hold of his misty, cracked glasses to wipe them with his thin shirt. It was objectively cold outside. Snow fell in abundance. The end of December was known to have such freezing weather. Harry hadn’t been afforded a jacket to take with him when his uncle had tossed him out.

Alcohol had helped the cold subjectively. There were people who believed children should taste the burning substance, and then there were people who thought that children should get drunk so as to more readily accept scummy offers.

The excess of the immoral shone through humanity this day. Tomorrow would bring the New Year when things would change. What happened was the past and did not matter! 

Tomorrow would be better. 

Harry staggered onward. Clutching his stomach and holding back whimpers. He gritted his teeth and upon noticing a group of people hid from them.

Through trial and error he’d found himself following along the Thames. The river trickling eased his mind, the sweet smell of water lulled his overwhelmed senses, and the benches littered around gave Harry a beautiful idea to lie down on one of them.

He sat on the closest one his jelly legs would let him and closed his eyes and tried not to throw up again. Any lurch in movement did not go unnoticed. It kicked his perspective around until no matter what position he got in it wouldn’t stop spinning and twisting and _ hurting _.

A slow string of pleads and curses fled past his lips and into the world to judge and hear.

‘’Boy,’’ a soft voice said from the chilling darkness and Harry couldn’t open his eyes. He felt his heart beating and his ears ringing and his nose flaring with nausea. But he couldn’t move an inch.

‘’can you hear me?’’ the voice continued and Harry oddly found it comforting. It wasn’t scathing and high pitched like his aunt’s or slurred like the alcoholic’s had been. This beautiful, calming voice belonged to a man.

A rustling of clothes was the only indication that the man had moved. Harry flinched and tore his emerald eyes open only to see a pair of crimson staring right back at him. The man had moved quickly and switched benches to be closer to him. Harry’s breathing turned shallow, but quicker. Sweat pooled into lines that slid down his youthful face.

It had become so terribly cold. Harry became aware of himself and would have surged away from the stranger had he his usual motor skills in order.

A twinge of pain echoed in his mind, but Harry tossed it aside as being drunk, choosing to ignore the pedant stare the crimson eyed man was holding with him. When he closed his emerald eyes he heard a breathy question, ‘’Harry Potter, why are you here?’’

Through chattering teeth and a splintering headache, Harry mustered to say the following. ‘’I can’t go back.’’

‘’Can’t or won’t?’’ The man who knew his name pressed for answers, attempting to shake him awake. ‘’This was an impulsive action.’’

‘’They’ve tired of me.’’

‘’Who?’’ The man wondered and his voice held a pang of genuine curiosity. Not the pitying kind or the accusing kind either. It was neutral and objective and his voice was soft and his words had power.

‘’Petunia and Vernon.’’ Harry sneered and balled his hands into tight fists with white knuckles and bone threatening to break the skin. ‘’I cost them more money than I’m worth.’’

‘’So you left because you couldn’t take their words.’’ The man whispered, not particularly convinced, but having no other way of finding out because Harry held his eyes firmly shut, focusing on the water and the composed, reassuring tone of voice the man possessed. ‘’How foolish and naïve.’’

_ ‘’No.’’ _ Harry spat the word harshly, more of a hiss than anything else. _ ‘’NO!’’ _ he shouted at the red eyed man and didn’t understand why he couldn’t just mind his own business like everyone else. What kind of sick prank this was for the man.

‘’They hurt me.’’ He shook with rage. ‘’Aunt Petunia broke my glasses when she hit me with a frying pan.’’ gestured his cracked glasses, obscuring his intense gaze. ‘’Uncle Vernon beat me. They locked me up in my cupboard and they wouldn’t let me out! Cutting costs they’d said!’’

Profuse tears brimmed in the corner of his eyes, giving them a glassy glaze.

A retching, keening, desperate whimper transformed into a loud cry as he struggled to breathe properly. The excitement of everything finally got to him, and Harry lunged for the man, missed, and fell face-first on the ground. The snow was wet and Harry didn’t like to admit that he had eaten a fair share of it to keep moving.

‘’Why did you go to London, then?’’ the red eyed man asked him. Strong hands pulled Harry up to his feet and when Harry, disbalanced that he was, threw up in the snow, one hand moved to collect the boy’s glasses from falling off into the mess.

‘’I wandered.’’

‘’Why go to _Woolwich_ specifically?’’

‘’Wasn’t planned.’’

‘’Don’t lie to me, Harry Potter.’’ The man explained and asked, no! – hissed at him to answer. However, Harry felt at ease with the man. He had reached that point of no return, or rather whatever fight belonged to him had disappeared.

‘’I don’t know, I just did.’’ Harry tried to shrug, but the man’s firm hold on his shoulder hindered him in the task. His stomach growled and it was loud and it scrunched up his face in pain.

‘’Come along.’’ The man said and pulled Harry to his side so Harry could lean on the tall, warm man without a problem. ‘’You need to eat something.’

‘’Am I going to die?’’ Harry nimbly wrapped his hand around the man’s arm and held onto it like a child did its mother’s skirts.

‘’No.’’ came the impassive, but certain reply. It brought Harry comfort. He closed his eyes again, feeling his eyelids weighing him down more than his wet clothes did. A sudden shroud of warmth covered Harry from head to toe and he leaned into his companion some more to soak up the sensation. It was easier to let the stranger lead him to wherever he wanted than to put up a fight or walk by himself anywhere.

‘’Are we really going to go and eat?’’ Harry mumbled into the other’s clothes. His saviour wore some sort of silky coat. It wasn’t like anything Harry could recall his uncle wearing. He didn’t trust his brain that told him that the coat was well past the man’s knees, worn like some sort of robe.

‘’Yes, do you want something specific? Anything you can’t eat, tell me beforehand.’’

Harry’s jumbled mind came to the conclusion that if he was really going to get some food from the kind man, he was not going to rip him off. No, he would choose something that was common and cheap. His taste in food would not prove his relative’s point that he was an expensive child and one that no one could put up with.

‘’…want chips.’’

‘_ ’Just _ chips?’’ surprise, ‘’Are you sure?’’

Harry nodded and then tensed when his body told him that that had been a foolish thing to do. The man stopped and asked him if he wanted to rest for a bit. If movement was a problem, they needn’t move.

‘’I’m sorry.’’ Harry whispered hoarsely and grabbed a hold of the man’s clothes tightly, burying his face to mask a sob. ‘’I’m sorry for this.’’

‘’Hush.’’ The man merely told him and took something out from his inner coat pocket. Instead of warmth, this time calmness oozed off of him. ‘’You are all right now. Whatever has happened has happened and you cannot change it. You are all right now, Harry Potter.’’

Harry sniffled and sought the man’s soothing touch. He was a child starved of affection and it showed through tonight the most. Usually he knew to hide it and ignore any pang of envy he had towards Dudley when Petunia hugged and kissed him, or when Vernon would pat him on the back like a father knew how.

Harry Potter lacked that crucial aspect of growing up.

‘’Please, don’t leave me.’’

The only practical part about being drunk was his inability to overthink things. Harry couldn’t know what the man felt when he said. ‘’I will not.’’ And he didn't have the mental capacity to piece together a fictional story that would only bring down his spirits.

He allowed being led to a small fish and chips shop that had glowing, doubled numbers indicating it worked 24/7. Which to Harry were either 27 when he squinted, 2447 if he closed and opened his eyes, or just simply too confusing to view when he tried his best to focus.

The man eased him into a booth and ordered their food.

‘’Harry Potter, what should I do with you?’’

* * *

Lord Voldemort had a bad habit of letting his Tom Riddle flicker through around this festive holiday. He sat on a bench in Woolwich, not far from Wool’s Orphanage and forced himself not to think, not bother with big and small matters his attention needed to oversee.

He’d gotten the Sorcerer's Stone in 1991 and things had really taken off from there.

His existence as Quirrel’s parasite had been uncomfortable; though, it did serve its purpose.

Harry Potter, that wretched prophecy boy, had not turned up for his first year at Hogwarts. It was odd and rather disappointing. Even more so when Quirrel had found out that the boy was a squib. People were rioting and demanding Dumbledore explain himself. Their Boy Who Lived was not _ theirs _. What irony that was!

The one meant to destroy him had no magic!

Lord Voldemort had not understood how that could be. It did lessen his stress, in a way, because then he turned his focus on more important things; restoring his body and having more control over his muddled magic. The later seventies had been full of turbulent decisions that led to his demise.

A small boy tottered towards his leisure spot. Ugh. Voldemort watched him keenly and needn’t be near to smell the upsetting stench of cheap vodka radiating off of the boy. How absolutely juvenile for adolescents to drink themselves into a stupor like this. He let him approach, but sneered when the boy couldn’t even control his movements, causing him to fall on the bench right next to his.

_‘’Fuck.’’ _

What an extensive vocabulary, thought Voldemort, but still listened to the obviously drunk child next to him.

_''Oh, none of this is good. Fuck. Fuck. I’m going to die. They were right. I am a freak and I’m not worth anyone’s trouble and I’m,’’ _the boy stopped mid rant to inhale through his nose and fight down bile.

Voldemort realised, with a still, cold expression on his face – that the stupid boy with no self-preservation skills whatsoever had spoken this lovely mess of incoherency in _ parseltongue _.

Well, New Year’s Eve just got more interesting.

Lord Voldemort approached the boy faster than lightning, not touching him so as not to spook him in this vulnerable state. He asked him gently, ‘’Boy, can you hear me?’’ and found his reply when two killing-curse green eyes peered at him like a doe caught in headlights.

Jumping quickly inside his mind, Voldemort saw tangled memories that led to this catastrophic evening.

A slight woman held a frying pan and swung.

A swine man screamed and slammed shut the door of a cramped space.

A low life pushed and reeked of alcohol, grinning sloppily and whispering _ filth _ into a terrified child’s ear.

A name was being sneered by a giant boy. A name so familiar, Voldemort had to strain his ears to hear it for what it was, because this child could not be Harry Potter. No, he could not. No Potter had ever been a parselmouth.

A sick feeling pooled in his stomach as he backtracked out of the boy’s fragile mind. Why had the boy moved so mechanically, as if being led here specifically? To his spot where he’s been coming and going on this day for decades! Save for the pause when his existence was not.

Woolwich Orphanage had been his home. Wool’s for short, really. Like Londoner’s ever had the time of day to roll an entire word out properly. That accent had been his nightmare during aristocratic Hogwarts, with children in green richer than anyone Tom Riddle had known in the muggle world.

He wanted to dive into the boy’s mind once more, but found his eyes shut and his window closed. It seemed inappropriate to barge right in with a brutal spell. If he had eye contact it went more smoothly. No, _ later _. He would scour the boy’s mind when he wasn’t so despondent.

Through terrible trial and error and an uncomfortable spell of watching the boy trying to salvage what little food he had eaten, the dark lord led Harry into a fish and chips shop he knew was owned by someone who knew not to ask questions. An unwanted, non-magical relative of a follower.

‘’Lock up.’’ Lord Voldemort ordered the only staff and when the man went to do as told, turned his gaze towards Harry and shrugged the boy off of him into a booth. He was so clingy, even after he’d cast both a warming and calming charm on him.

Salazar if the boy started crying again, Voldemort would just disapparate.

‘’Harry Potter, what should I do with you?’’

The boy raised his bleary green gaze and it looked wrong without glasses, even if they were broken. Voldemort wouldn’t give them back to him, however, not until he was certain the boy wouldn’t misplace or dirty them.

They were brought two portions of the same British meal and left to their own devices.

‘’If you don’t like fish, you don’t have to eat it.’’ He said to amend the boy’s frightened look upon seeing the food. It was odd to see someone terrified of something Tom Riddle had found scarce and worthy of stealing. Stupid people rationed their food. The smart hoarded and stole and ate when there was because tomorrow there needn’t necessarily be.

‘’Thank you, sir. I appreciate this.’’ Harry Potter said gratefully, to his parents’ murderer. Oh the irony was not lost on the dark wizard. Not in the least. He took out his recently acquired wand to fiddle with it in this tense situation. If Dumbledore could see him now, Tom Riddle wondered what that dead, dead man would say. Something tedious, no doubt.

‘’Just eat, Harry.’’

The boy took his suggestion and tried to eat as much as he could. He didn’t eat the fish, electing to snack on chips more. Like any other teenager.

Voldemort ate his meal, but his attention remained on the small, malnourished boy sitting across from him. The light above them flickered. He ordered them some tea.

The staff tried to argue that they didn’t want to spend New Year’s whilst making tea, but one crimson look had dispelled such rebellious, disobedient notions.

‘’What’s the stick for?’’ warily the boy asked and pulled the plate closer to him, possibly threatened that Voldemort would take it away and what? Poke his eyes out with the elder wand?

‘’It’s a wand.’’ Voldemort said and swished it through the air, causing the light to stop flickering. Another swish turned it off. The last returned it to the flickering normalcy.

Swallowing a few fries and blinking, Harry Potter found his voice to exclaim: ‘’Magic isn’t real!’’

‘’It is.’’ The dark wizard assured and put away the elder wand. He’d jumped across hurdles to get the wand in his possession. The rest of the hallows he couldn't care less for. Being master of death did not interest him. His immortality and hold over the wizarding world was secure and nothing else mattered.

‘’…it’s true then, what my aunt said.’’ Harry whispered hoarsely, exhausted but craving knowledge and validation. He looked straight into the killer’s eyes and asked him, ‘When I was little she said my parents died in a car crash so I wouldn’t repeat it and cause a scene. They wanted to be normal.’’ Voldemort grimaced, recalling Mrs. Cole bitterly. ‘’But recently she blamed me for being so freakish because my parents were freaks and I get it now, I think. My parents were magic, yeah?’’

‘’Yes.’’ Voldemort answered. He eyed Harry Potter and asked him then, in return. ‘’Have you done anything so your aunt might think you were magic yourself?’’ he very much doubted that, but it did surprise him that Lily Potter’s family would have no regard for the boy. He was wholly ordinary. Horcrux, set aside.

‘’I can talk to snakes. It spooks them. Dudley blames me mostly for his mistakes and they chalk it up as me being unnatural.’’

‘’It never ceases to amaze me the lengths some muggles go to take their frustrations out on those more vulnerable than them.’’ Tom Riddle confessed, reminded of his formative years spent in the orphanage. He had at least had magic and fought back, Harry Potter had not had such power. 

‘’Sir, please don’t make me go back to them.’’

‘’I have no intention of doing that, Harry Potter. Rest assured.’’

His mind stirred and the cogs turned hurriedly. Since Harry Potter was his horcrux he could not let him go so easily. No, not until he found a way to reverse this mistake and pour the bit of his soul into some impenetrable object. Creating a horcrux was excruciating business. Not something to be taken lightly.

Lily Potter flinging herself in front of the killing curse had done something. It had destabilised his body and mind, causing a part of him to latch onto the only alive vessel – Harry Potter. The question remained: how was only a small piece of him able to latch onto the boy and not his entire soul?

No, he needed to look into this.

‘’Harry Potter,’’ Lord Voldemort offered to the Boy Who Lived, ‘’how would you like to live with me?’’

‘’I don’t know you,’’ the boy said, adding hastily a polite, ‘sir.’’

‘’I knew your parents.’’ Voldemort said, not having to lie. He twirled the elder wand between his long, slender fingers.

‘’I don’t even know your name.’’ The boy had sobered up luckily, since his power of speech and coherent thought had come back.

‘’Tom Riddle,’’ Lord Voldemort supplied the muggle name, outstretching his free hand for Harry Potter to shake. If things went south, he could always imperius the boy into coming with him.

Although, the dark wizard wished to avoid doing that because of the subsequent consequences that would muddle his affairs.

‘’…promise you aren’t a pedophile.’’ Harry whispered and braced himself.

Voldemort balked, offended by the boy’s insinuation. ‘’No!’’

The boy’s form relaxed just as Voldemort’s rigid features softened slightly.

‘’What’s done is done.’’ Voldemort told him firmly, forcing the boy to look at him by sheer will, ‘’You can’t change the past.’’

‘’Yeah. I know that.’’

‘’Will you go with me, then?’’

Harry looked at the food he’d been given, at the glass of tea he’d drunk, and then remembered what had happened before running into the oddly dressed man, wizard.

He found himself nodding.

‘’All right, brace yourself. You will throw up.’’ Voldemort said and grabbed Harry Potter to side-along apparate him.

* * *

Narcissa scowled when Harry Potter threw up over her impeccable rugs. What animal had been skinned for such an honour remained a mystery; one Lord Voldemort didn’t wish to untangle.

‘’Narcissa,’’ neutrally the Lord spoke and gestured a doubled over Harry Potter, ‘’this is Harry Potter. I hope you take good care of him while I find some brandy to open and think over my incredibly thought-out actions.’’

Narcissa nodded and gestured him to the liquor cabinet in Lucius’ office.

‘’I apologise for the rugs, the boy has had an awful fourteen years.’’

‘’He is a squib.’’ She stated, but her tone wavered, wondering if it was the truth.

‘’Yes.’’ Voldemort answered her in a resolute, determined manner. There was no space left to be questioned. Harry Potter was a squib. The education those with magic were afforded would never be his. Hogwarts would never be his reality, for that Lord Voldemort pitied him immensely.

Though, it wasn’t as if Voldemort would allow the boy to remain uneducated.

He was his horcrux, after all! There was Tom Riddle level of potential, right there.

‘’What will you do with him, my lord?’’

‘’Adopt him? Send him off to Oxford when he’s the right age?’’

‘’You seem uncertain…will you tell him about his parents’ death?’’

‘’Merlin, Narcissa, I sure hope to avoid that conversation. You are not to tell him anything. Also, here are the boy’s glasses.’’

Narcissa bowed a deep bow to appease his rising temper and swiped the glasses in her hands.

‘’Excuse me.’’ Voldemort said in the end and went to find that brandy, knowing he’d left his horcrux in good hands.

Narcissa spelled the rugs clean and knocked the boy out with another spell, finally giving him a chance to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Tomorrow, things would be better.

* * *

2004

‘’I can’t believe my son has become a social worker.’’ Lord Voldemort said, befuddled and blinking. He hadn’t been able to separate Horcrux from Harry, so he’d decided to just raise the boy to the best of his abilities. 

Harry Potter grinned from ear to ear and waited for Voldemort to high-five him back. ‘’Come on, don’t be a sore loser. I told you I wasn’t going to finish law or medicine.’’

‘’I have made peace with that.’’ Lord Voldemort glared at the hanging hand and scowled, though Harry knew he wasn’t displeased with him. Just sulking.

‘’Daad.’’ Harry Potter waved his hand, signalling him. ‘’High-five me.’’

‘’Ugh,’’ Voldemort obliged him, ‘’you’re insufferable.’’

**Author's Note:**

> https://discord.gg/44z9xWvD - feel free to join, I have a discord :D


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